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About the Better Buy Project/Frequently Asked Questions

Why the Federal Acquisition Process?

On his first day in office, President Obama challenged leaders in government to "use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector." The acquisition process represents one of the most important areas of collaboration between government and the private sector.

Unfortunately, it is also among the most complex and least transparent. The Better Buy Project is an experiment dedicated to the belief that there's a lot of room for improvement in the way government buys products and services. We're testing this hypothesis by asking for your ideas on how to make acquisition process more open, transparent and collaborative.

The best part of this project is that the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) GSA would really like to adopt some of your best ideas. Promising ideas will be selected by GSA to be piloted on an upcoming acquisition, where lessons learned will be captured for future implementation. But that really depends on us, and the ideas we're able to produce.

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What Topics Are At Issue?

This project is concerned primarily with the pre-contract-award stages of the acquisition process—the activities that take place before the government "signs on the dotted line" to buy a product or service. Those areas are:

The ultimate goal is to improve how government learns about and chooses what it buys—in other words, to make government a more informed, more effective consumer.

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What Kind of Feedback Are You Looking For?

We are looking for ideas to make federal acquisition more open, transparent, and collaborative. What does that mean?

We believe that making the process more open, transparent and collaborative will make government more likely to end up with the right item at the right price.

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What Is Your Moderation Policy?

This online forum allows you the opportunity to post comments and other information that will remain publicly viewable on this website. The site therefore operates a moderation policy to ensure that comments are appropriate and not harmful to others. Comments which include any of the following may be deleted by site administrators:

Additionally, while we invite open participation and diverse viewpoints to be shared, moderators reserve the right to remove posts which do not address some aspect of the stated purpose of this forum: To collect ideas about using collaboration and social media to improve the acquisition process. We deeply value your time and input, and our desire is to remove as few posts as possible while ensuring that a focused, constructive discussion takes place.

Finally, in addition to this policy, this site allows individual users to flag ideas as being spam, duplicate, or otherwise inappropriate. When an idea is flagged a sufficient number of times, it is automatically placed into a queue for review by moderators. We reserve the right to remove any posting that receives a sufficient number of "flags" to be placed in this queue, though will not automatically do so.

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What Are The Terms Of Service And Privacy Policy?

This site is hosted using a service called UserVoice. You can read the UserVoice Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

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Better Buy is a joint project of the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council in conjunction with the General Services Administration
IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM THE BETTERBUY PROJECT TEAM!
GSA FEDSIM has begun to act on the ideas you submitted by launching two acquisitions with the new BetterBuy Pilot Wiki. The new wiki, which was originally proposed in an idea on this site, will gather and utilize input from citizens outside the traditional acquisition community to improve the acquisition process. Be sure to check back with the BetterBuy Project regularly and continue to submit ideas.
-- The BetterBuy Project Team
How can we use collaboration and social media to make the federal acquisition process more efficient and effective?

The acquisition process – the way government buys goods and services – is among the most complex and least transparent aspects of government. The Better Buy Project is asking for your best ideas on how to make it more open and collaborative! Promising ideas will be selected by GSA to be piloted on future acquisitions. We are looking primarily at the pre-contract-award stages of the process – the activities that take place before the government "signs on the dotted line" to buy a product or service:


Market Research and Requirements Definition Phase Forum

Market Research and Requirements Definition Phase

  1. 22 votes

    Format for interagency agreements

    Recently a draft format for interagency agreements was distributed, and everyone agreed that it was a disaster. It was extremely lengthy and included many unncessary sections for most agencies. And was an uneditable form! It was a waste of paper, and no agency wanted to use it. How about usin... more

    by Patrick A | 3 comments
  2. 2 votes

    distinguish between improvements to services procurement and goods procurement. For services...talk.

    Services are all about relationships (i.e. working relationships. The procurement process is rigid and dehumanizing -- undermines those relationships before they begin. For services procurement, dialogue is essential. A first pass at a proposal is only the first step in a conversation about how... more

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  3. 1 votes

    Reduce spending on military pomp and circumstance events.

    Change of Command ceremonies occur with each new military Commander/Commanding Officer every 2-3 years at every installation. Activities are planned months in advance requiring massive manhours, planning, coordination, materials, equipment rentals, impact on facilities, and administrative costs.... more

    by AmyZing | 0 comments
  4. 6 votes

    Create agency advisory boards comprising the eventual users of the procured items

    The federal employees who end up using procured items have no place in the procurement process. People above them and in different offices decide what is needed and monitor contractors' progress; these same people have little first-hand, on-the-ground experience with the problems they are trying ... more

    by Matthew Burton | 0 comments
  5. 49 votes

    Standardize electronic contracting systems

    Federal agencies use different electronic procurement systems, such as AMS's Procurement Desktop and Compusearch PRISM. There's a plethora of them out there. It takes lots of time to train specialists on the use of new systems when they move from one agency to another. Imagine a world where th... more

    by Sarah Covington | 5 comments
  6. 20 votes

    tie acquisition planning to budget formulation

    Once FY budget request has left the agency, procurement officials need to comb through the requests to identify high dollar programs which can benefit from acquisition planning. Once identified, the aspects of competition, contract type and contract management would be address at a high level wit... more

    by anonymous | 1 comment
  7. 1 votes

    Listen

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  8. 1 votes

    research

    by anonymous | 1 comment
  9. 75 votes

    Ask Congress to be more fiscally responsible by passing a timely buget so agencies can plan better

    Year end spending is often driven by a lack of planning when it's hard to take a long-term perspective. The agencies are often put in a box because Congress is always looking at the short-term election cycle and posturing for their personal agendas. Therefore, funding isn't approved until half wa... more

    by anonymous | 2 comments
  10. 14 votes

    Incorporate usability and human factors methodology early on in the design of governmental systems.

    Early usability and human factors work brings the end-users of a given technological system into mind from the beginning. There are many methods to help design systems for the user. There are entire fields, educational programs, academic and professional societies aimed at improving interaction... more

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  11. 14 votes

    Use Crowd-sourcing as a viable means for conducting market research.

    I propose that federal agencies consider the creation of an online application that supports Crowd-Sourcing so that members from academia, industry and private citizens can provide input and recommended solutions for upcoming government requirements. This type of information sharing would be inva... more

    by Mike Derrios | 3 comments
  12. 5 votes

    Segment acquisitions into smaller pieces for faster procurement and more competition

    Government procurement takes so long and the scopes are so large that the technology is often out of date and can only be supplied by a few big, entrenched vendors.
    1. Crowd source ways of breaking projects into smaller pieces that can start immediately. A risk with using social media for requir... more

    by anonymous | 1 comment
  13. 5 votes

    Build Collaborative Technology Experience Knowledge (C-TEK) virtual world

    C-TEK for virtualized modeling of requirements and solutions evaluation. Put the requirements in common/academic terminology, end marketeer jargon, get everyone working on the same requirements and solutions seeking the best apt and agile lifecycle consensus decision. Let the customers and acad... more

    by J.D.Bailey | 2 comments
  14. 2 votes

    We should make this website 508 compliant.

    by az | 0 comments
  15. 1 votes

    Compete Micro Purchases

    by anonymous | 2 comments
  16. 2 votes

    use collaborative technologies to solicit innovative technologies from non-standard sources.

    Innovation should not be limited to current government contract holders.

    by anonymous | 1 comment
  17. 4 votes

    thoroughly involve govt.travelers in the analysis of problems and ideas for new travel software

    I work at the State Dept. and our travel system, E2, developed by Carlson Wagonlit, is deplorable. From the business process underlying the software, to the lack of any sense of rigorous computer programming best practices, the program endlessly frustrates the myriad State Dept. employees I help ... more

    by Brendan O'Connor | 0 comments
  18. 1 votes

    try buying from Craigslist

    by anonymous | 0 comments
  19. 3 votes

    When did just become about social media? I

    When did just become about social media? I thought it was about improving govn acquisition in many ways

    by balek2 | 0 comments
  20. 1 votes

    Phased and consistent obligation plan across all departments.

    A relatively simple concept, mandate that every department implements a phased and consistent obligation plan (e.g. 60% 1QTR, 20% 2QTR, 15% 3QTR, and 5% 4 QTR). This by itself will solve alot of issues.

    by anonymous | 0 comments

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